What? How? Who?

[mme_hardy]

Deep-frying foods in vegetable oil seems like a modern American craze, but it was an ancient cooking tradition in West Africa, and one that we have inherited from enslaved people.

Akara sounds pretty tasty, but that's a bizarre sentence up there.

Comments

[conuly]

...is it maybe the vegetable oil that's the crux and not the frying part?

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, that would be my reading. As opposed to lard or schmalz.

[malkingrey]

Presumably this person doesn't think olive oil counts either?

[tree_and_leaf]

To be fair, olive oil comes from fruit. But it's still a bit of a stupid thing to say.

[conuly]

Do we use olive oil for deep frying? I thought the smoke point was too low for that.

[malkingrey]

I actually don't know. My own relationship with deep frying is that, as a known and gazetted klutz, it's something I'm better off letting experts do for me.

[legionseagle]

You can. I was entranced to discover on my first visit to Greece that the chips were done in olive oil.

[mme_hardy]

Mmmmmmmmmm and a couple more mmms beside.

[legionseagle]

They may not be the crispest, but the flavour....

[edenfalling]

That strikes me as a generous interpretation, given that the recipe specifically mentions "1-2 cups lard or vegetable oil" in the ingredient list, and the instructions again say "Add lard or oil to a cast-iron skillet."

[conuly]

Well, I may've only glanced at the headline here. I didn't want my faith in humanity to suffer too too much.

[mme_hardy]

I deeply envy your retaining some.